Adventures in Online Dating, Vol. 4

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 1 Comment

You’re standing in a corner, your heart pounding and your pulse racing. You’re trying desperately not to sweat – sweat is a sign of anxiety and you can’t let them see any weakness. Half-shrouded in shadows, you constantly scan the crowd, looking for that one person. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a flash of red. It’s him – you know it’s him. You move carefully, slowly, deliberately. You don’t want to startle or frighten him. Inch by inch, you move closer. Then he turns around and suddenly, you’re staring face to face.

Sounds like a scene from a good (or bad?) spy movie, right? Wrong! That’s just my recollection of a first date.

Maybe I’ve just got spies on the brain, but it seems to me that dating – and specifically, online dating – is a whole lot like a spy movie or novel. Sure, there are a lot less explosions and guns (I hope), but entering the tricky and uncertain world of dating requires you to call upon the same skills used by so many of our finest fictional spies.

Now, I’m not advocating lying (that’s generally a bad idea), but there is a certain amount of half-truths that come into play when you first start dating someone. When we’re trying to impress that special boy or girl, we tend to adopt or create a cover – the person who we want to be, instead of the person we really are. We’re trying to be the person that boy or girl wants, so that they’ll decide to stick around.

Every good cover has some elements of truth – all-out lies would be too obvious. So we’re still presenting ourselves to this other person, but we’re only telling them the good parts, the parts that don’t shame or embarrass us. We keep all the deep-dark secrets hidden and only offer up partial truths. Just like a good spy who keeps his or her true intentions cloaked in mystery, we only reveal things that seem irrelevant at first. We don’t want to give away our secrets – at least not without getting something in return – so we proceed with caution and maybe even a little bit of suspicion.

Does that sound cynical or jaded? Perhaps. But we’re trying to guard our hearts from being hurt. As much as we may want to take that risk, we still also want to be careful. In espionage and in dating, appearing vulnerable can be dangerous. Other people could take advantage of you. Sometimes, it’s worth it. Sometimes, it’s not.

Spy movies and novels – and dating – focus a lot on the psychological aspect of the trade. There are a lot of mind games going on, as one spy (or date) tries to outwit the other. In both scenarios, we are literally sizing each other up, trying to determine if that guy in the trench coat (or the red shirt) is ally or enemy. And like any good spy mission, dating also involves some covert operations, ventures into hostile territory to seek out insider information. While Bond might pose as a waiter in Russia, here in 2010, that often means googling the sh*t out of someone. [Side note: if /when my online dates ever get my last name and decide to Google me, I am screwed. Because I’ve googled myself and that leads from Twitter to this blog to this post. Whoops.]

A good spy novel or movie produces a lot of emotions, including anticipation, expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, adrenaline rushes and maybe even terror. I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like dating to me. No matter what you do or how hard you try, when it comes to dating or espionage, there’s just no knowing what’s going to happen next.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

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